For Neil deGrasse Tyson, its increasing knowledge and reducing suffering daily, that drives hime? Reflect on what drives you everyday.
Category: purpose
Questions about Purpose
The last six month opened up amazing opportunities for me to reflect on the notion of purpose. These opportunities arose during conversations with family, team and clients in trying to make sense of the pandemic. These opportunities arose during webinars conducted to help people with their concerns, anxieties, stress and other psychological challenges. These opportunities arose from the 150 plus participants from 15 countries taking part in the four ‘Mastery of Self’ through NLP, online certificate courses over the past few months.
In this blog post I will attempt to list down the questions that came up. Some of these questions were already asked earlier, some of these are modifications to the old questions and some of these are new questions.
My goals have become irrelevant due to the pandemic? What do I do now?
Why do I need to have goals when they can become irrelevant due to uncontrollable situation?
What is the purpose of the pandemic? How is it serving us?
Is our purpose changed due to changing realities?
I am struggling more due to the pandemic. Is it helping me to find purpose?
Am I struggling more during the pandemic because I try to live purposefully?
Do our values change with situations? Arn’t they supposed to be fixed?
Isn’t values an important component of our purpose?
My purpose is clashing with the purpose of some of my family. It is prominent now because I spend a lot of time with them. How do it deal with them?
Are religious people more purposeful than non-religious people?
Does spirituality become more important than religion for purposeful people?
Does the notion of Purposeful living taken a new meaning with the pandemic?
Are world leaders being purposeful in the way they are handling the pandemic?
I will reframe from answering these questions to provide you the opportunity to reflect and answer these questions. I am not sure what that process will do. I will be delighted to hear from you the answers that came up and how these questions and answers served you.
I wish you purposeful living.
Do We Keep Writing or Re-Read What We Wrote?
A Pen, A Paper, and A Purpose – Isbah Nasir.
A Poetic spoken word piece that explore the question: what is the purpose of life? and explores the decisions we make that shape our lives.
As you reflect on these words, a powerful line within it to reflect is; “Just keep writing, keep filling in the chapters on the pages of your life and don’t look back because if you keep regretting and rereading you won’t move past and you miss that final ending at last”.
What has passed has passed. Everything that happened has given us some insights to assist us in our quest for our purpose. The next step we take, using the learnings of the past or not, will help us get more insights in our quest. Turning the page and moving on seems more meaningful that turning back and regretting.
Reflect on your life so far to make sense of your higher purposes and use that information to take your next step in your quest for purpose.
Who Needs Healing? The Society, You or Both?
As you read this quote, reflect on how well or sick the society you live in. Do you see the level of wellness and sickness or are you blind to it? Have you adjusted to the society or are you trying to adjust the society to be well so that you can be in sync with it. What baby steps would you take to heal the society? If you do not see how sick the society is, do you require some healing/ If so what step would you take? Hope these questions are helpful in finding success, happiness and peace.
Where Great Men Are Made
The place which developed thousands of boys to be men of stature for over 165 year, the place I had the good fortune of being nurtured, St Anthony’s Collage in Kandy, the hill capital of Sri Lanka. The picture speaks of the nurturing location on the banks of the Mahaweli river, the space provided for sports signifying the importance of the development of the body in addition to the mind. To write about the great men produced by St Anthony’s will take a few books. All I have is gratitude for my alma mater.
The Pandemic and Temporal Aspect of Purposefulness
In the last 8 blog posts in the ‘purpose quest series’, we explored how the pandemic impacted eight important pillars for purposeful living; spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical (health), financial, environmental and societal. Let’s explore the ninth pillar, the ‘temporal’ aspect in this blog post. As in the past eight blog posts let me attempt to describe my personal experience during the pandemic.
The word ‘Temporal’ has two broad applications; relating to worldly as opposed to spiritual affairs (secular) and relating to time. I use the word in relation to the use of time. The temporal aspect of purposeful relates to the use of limited time. The purposeful person attempts to utilise most of the time for purposeful activity, which requires letting go of non-purposeful activity.
The last eight weekly blog posts in the ‘purposeful quest’ series illustrated how my time was allocated to purposeful activity in spiritual, mental, emotional, relational, physical (health), financial, ecological and temporal areas. These activities took most of my waking time and there was rarely any time remaining for non-purposeful activity during the approximately 16 hours of waking time.
The sense I make from this reflection is that the pandemic gave me so much opportunities to be purposeful, that it left me with almost no time for non-purposeful activities. This way of life has kept me occupied in meaningful and energising activity, giving me inner success, happiness and peace. My purpose is to inspire others to live a purposeful life and I hope this series of blog posts will inspire you too to live a purposeful life and find Success happiness and peace.
Say ‘No’ to Distraction and Say ‘Yes’ to ‘Mastery’
Robin Sharma – on the dangers of your devise and other non-value adding addictions on your success and how to gain monomaniacal focus, using practical and neurological information.
As you listen to this powerful speech by Robin Sharma, reflect on steps you can take to kill the distractions of your life, build purposeful habits and give life and energy to your special talent … to achieve mastery purposefully.
How You Lived Will Epitomise Your Death
How Did You Die? – Edmund Vance Cooke
Reflect on the deeper meaning of this poem as you listen to it and read the lyrics below. How did you respond to trouble times? What did you do when you fell down? What is real success & failure? How would you face life’s challenges from now onwards?
Read by Shane Morris – Full Poem:
Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?
Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?
You are beaten to earth?
Well, well, what’s that!Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there-that’s disgrace.
The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts;
It’s how did you fight-and why?
And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.
Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only how did you die?
Protect Your Secret From Complacency
As you read this quote by Aesop, reflect on a baby step you can take to protect your secret – your special character and values, from getting swallowed up by complacency.
Liberating Empathy
Can empathy be developed or Liberated? As you watch this video, reflect on this questions. Consider how important empathy is for leadership success. Is there an ideal amount of empathy? Could empathy be too much or two little? What steps would you take to liberate the ideal amount of empathy from within you for your leadership success.
The following process can be used to create a learning experience for your team using this video.
Step 1 – A moderator (an expert from your company) to open the session, explaining the importance of the session.
Step 2 – Show the video – let participants absorb, take notes and write down questions to ask later
Step 3 – Have a Q&A session and a discussion
Step 4 – Agree on actions to be taken based on the video
Step 5 – Participants to say how the session was useful.
Ranjan De Silva 